Credit-reporting company Equifax Inc. said Thursday that hackers gained access to some of its systems, potentially compromising the personal information of roughly 143 million U.S. consumers in one of the biggest and most threatening data breaches of recent years.

The size of the hack is second only to the pair of attacks on Yahoo disclosed last year that affected the information of as many as 1.5 billion customers. It also involves nearly twice the number affected by one of the highest-profile breaches at a financial firm,...

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Kevin Mitnick, who spent time on the FBI's Most Wanted List for hacking 40 corporations, discusses his new book, ‘The Art of Invisibility,’ on Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero. He also explains why hackers breach data with relative ease. Photo: iStock (Originally published Feb. 24, 2017)